Moving Right?: Bush's Decline and American Conservatism

...If it continues at a decent pace, modest tax increases and spending restraint for a brief period would probably be enough to open space for serious discussion of new policies that might entail spending increases...

...It is true to such an extent that one DISSENT / Summer 2006 29 can describe national politics as defined by the following rule: To be elected president, you should be a conservative Republican (Nixon twice, Reagan twice, Bush pere, Bush fils twice...

...Making a tight connection with the strongly conservative forces in American opinion and politics is not choosing to live on the margins of American public life...

...Two, the Hurricane Katrina disaster seems to have persuaded more than a few DISSENT / Summer 2006 31 critics of "big government" that limited government has its limits...

...The presence of African Americans and Latinos at the highest levels of the administration signals that a vote for the Republicans is no longer a sign of approval for pure racial conservatism (despite the presence of nearly open racists in the Republican coalition...

...In this challenging context, one hopes that the necessary debates about how to define and achieve Democratic goals can be conducted without as much bitterness and hyperbole as often surfaces in intra–Democratic Party discussions...

...It also seems promising on those issues where the Bush administration has moved far to the right but failed to bring the public along...

...Figures such as Stuart Hall, Martin Jacques, and Chantal Mouffe and Ernesto Laclau emphasized the extent of political shifts at both the elite and popular levels...

...It is a Republican distributive policy that uses market-like incentives along with government penalties to compel states and cities to try to change...

...As president he empathizes but does not spend political capital to achieve its goals...

...Taken together, theses cases do not support the idea that proposing a security orientation similar to that of the Bush administration guarantees electoral failure...

...Social) Spending...

...This is a recipe for a complicated battle for the presidency, in which candidates, issues, and positions are all in play...

...Even if 15 percent of African Americans changed their votes in this way—a large shift— it would mean a national electoral shift of less than 2 percent...

...national politics, going back to 1968, conservative Republicans have normally won presidential elections...

...Bush fils has sought to link democracy and security even more explicitly than in most of Clinton's formulations...

...You have a limited chance of being elected if you are a center-right (Carter) or centrist Democrat (Clinton twice...

...Think of an unguarded Bush family conversation about abortion...

...politics do not easily merge into a single left-right axis...

...Many believe that a major new wave of tax cutting, beyond what Bush has already accomplished, is not wise...

...He plays more or less the same double game as Reagan...

...But in three enduring conflicts, there are few surprises...

...Bush has been both to the left and to the right of where the median voter was located in 2000...

...The 2008 presidential election is still far away in political time, even if the candidates are already mobilizing...

...Both parties are apt to avoid making a major issue of racial politics...

...With the administration's approval ratings plummeting, Democratic victories seem possible...

...There is a normal fatigue with a second-term president, increasing mistrust of the administration on the Iraq War, and a very strong sense that the Bush presidency is incompetent...

...To some extent this is because the discussion has often been squeezed into the old framework of "political realignment"—meaning short, thorough, and dramatic reversals of political commitments that produce durable new configurations...

...This complexity is augmented by Bush's willingness to engage in the "triangulation" that he learned partly from Clinton...

...Major new political initiatives aimed at pushing the country further to the right can be a political liability regarding what has become the main issue of his presidency, as they threaten to break ties with remaining Democratic supporters...

...2 Bush is not the source of this complexity, but he has benefited from it...

...this is not Bush's invention.' And this preference does not mean majority support for large new tax cuts...

...This conception of democracy as both an intrinsic and an instrumental good intersects with Reagan's views but is otherwise unusual among Republican administrations...

...I will begin with the political context of Bush's evident decline, and then assess the effects of the administrations' efforts both for public opinion and policies...

...This is not because any large number of African Americans will be persuaded to vote for a Republican presidential candidate by Bush's notable breaking of a durable "rule" in U.S...

...In this context, Bush's plunging popularity —which may or may not recover in two years—does not guarantee Democratic success in 2006 or 2008, though it certainly expands opportunities...

...In each case he has moved the country in his direction...

...In two other cases, in Germany and Canada, it may be that left and center-left governments whose leaders were critical of Bush's security policies were defeated partly because of those positions...

...In percentage terms, current deficits are smaller than the deficits of the Reagan years of the mid- 1 980s...

...Republican efforts have not produced major programmatic shifts that could not be changed within a term or so by a new Democratic administration...

...This might constrain the initial choices of a new Democratic administration: it is hard to imagine a splashy first six months with ambitious and expensive programs...

...Yet even Bush's clear majority in 2004 shows that a Republican candidate is vulnerable to a good Democratic campaign whose leader cannot be stigmatized as politically or culturally extreme...

...Another limit arises from the fact that centrist Democrats have shown that they can run strong if not necessarily successful presidential campaigns (Clinton, Al Gore, Kerry...

...It also seems that he is open to immigration on ideological, cultural, and personal grounds...

...But he has spent most if not all of his capital in Iraq, where even many of his most ardent supporters think that a project they favored has been executed very poorly...

...Thus Bush is a conservative Republican who has a large and strong political base (35 percent to 40 percent of the population) committed to supporting him even when his administration is doing poorly...

...Some want to cooperate with moderate Republicans in developing a version of the DISSENT / Summer 2006 33 approach that Bush prefers...

...They will also emphasize national 34 DISSENT / Summer 2006 security issues in a broad way, even with all of the discontent about Iraq...

...If the Republicans continue to do as poorly as they now seem to be doing, there is also space for a strategy of sharp differences...

...Growth has been substantial for most of the last two decades...

...November 2008 is seven years from September 11, 2001...

...The prevalent Republican framework is badly worn, and the damage is due in large part to the rigidity and misjudgments of the Bush administration...

...This latter message, which is both hopeful and confused, underlies several recent works about national politics...

...With the axes I have discussed, Republicans will therefore be apt to argue for the central role of taxes as an issue, while linking low taxes to growth...

...politics in the late 1960s and early 1970s, Democratic Breakup: From the Civil Rights Act to the End of the Democratic Order (Cambridge University Press...

...Bush's expansive views of what security requires and of presidential and executive power may also be areas where he is to the right of the median voter, although he has probably moved the country part of the way toward his views...

...Unfortunately, there is not much sign of such innovation in or near the Democratic Party—this notable absence will doubtless strengthen the case that the centrist course is the sensible way to proceed...

...Part of Bush's relative openness to immigration derives from Republican ties to businesses that rely on access to cheap labor from noncitizens, both legal and illegal...

...They need to articulate new perspectives and programs that do not reinforce the pro-Republican logic of so many recent policy debates, with the public concluding that low taxes and high but unequal growth are better than illconceived and expensive programs that require big tax increases and might jeopardize growth...

...His preference is stronger and the size of his tax cuts larger than one would predict if policies expressed the views of the median voter/citizen...

...The Democrats are also divided on immigration...

...But the grave problems with the Iraq War and the administration's arrogant and brittle responses to critics have reduced the amount of change that he might otherwise have produced...

...Taxes...

...Given growth, new social programs should be up for serious consideration soon after the next election—if those programs are politically attractive and appear to be reasonably efficient...

...all else being equal, they might prefer to run against a left or left-center Democrat...

...If—despite the evident simplifications— we identify the willingness to use American military power in the pursuit of foreign policy aims as a feature of the "right," then Bush is a rightist...

...You cannot be elected president if you are a liberal Democrat...

...When the Republicans seem callous, incompetent, and sectarian, an effective opposition can start with a simple promise to revive public commitments to basic decency in social and labor market policies...

...Much of the growing and well-deserved public disapproval of the Bush administration is about poor performance and bad judgment...

...Democrats will also find that it makes sense to emphasize their position on cultural politics (in a relatively moderate form), as it is rewarding in many states to tie the Republicans to the religious right, and it is fair to do so...

...Public dissatisfaction about the Iraq War has not changed this...

...it also fails to distin32 DISSENT / Summer 2006 guish between the token presence of individuals and the appearance of new political leaders...

...He continues to argue that the United States has a basic security interest in expanding the number of democratic regimes in the world and strengthening democratic processes where they are fragile or new...

...Republican candidates see the 2008 presidential nomination as valuable, as can be inferred from the serious ongoing efforts of Rudolph Giuliani, John McCain, and others...

...There is one potentially crucial exception...

...In 2006, then, it will be unsurprising if Republican results are poor...

...ALONG THREE OTHER AXES of political conflict—racial politics, immigration, and national security—matters are more complicated...

...The instantly famous recent polls of Mexican citizens showing that a large part of that country's population would prefer to live in the United States suggest that openness alone cannot be a workable program...

...The dollar figures are much larger in the later years, but GDP in 2005 was roughly three times its 1985 size...

...The result was a complicated process of rethinking on the left that became one source of Tony Blair's political success...

...His policies have support beyond the core Republican base, especially if they are credited with the absence of major new terrorist attacks within the United States...

...Should the Democrats move toward the center in hopes of gaining support from moderates and putting pressure on weak supporters of Republican policies...

...2. One indication of this dispersion is that recent polls in which people are asked to identify the main problem facing the country find respondents spreading their answers widely, with Iraq being chosen about 20 percent of the time and a large number of other issues being designated as central by fewer than 10 percent of respondents...

...Two decades ago the success of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher provoked parallel discussions in the United States and Britain about whether major political shifts had occurred in the two countries...

...Political forces will emphasize the issues that they consider most likely to benefit them...

...He gains some additional support from the fact that his tax cuts were enacted in the face of predictions that the sky would fall, and the sky has not fallen...

...But he seemed uncomfortable both with the political issues and with actual Mexican Americans.' Whatever the sources of Bush's views, he seems to want a policy that would combine expanded measures to regulate the borders of the United States with continued large-scale immigration...

...On balance, Bush's tax cuts may not be as much of an obstacle to innovative reform as the widespread suspicion that even where problems need serious government attention, Democratic policies are unlikely to be effective...

...Latino votes are more in play, and in growing numbers...

...But cutting taxes is a widely shared enthusiasm, so that a clear majority of the population supports his tax cuts, and even larger majorities report that their own income taxes are too high...

...But Hillary Clinton, if she runs in 2008, will not get elected by calling for a return to her husband's approach...

...But the public has a longstanding preference for lower taxes...

...Otherwise, the result will be to create new ghettos of "guest workers" and illegal immigrants whose situation is usually a big source of political and social trouble...

...Racial integration is not part of this reform process...

...Another significant measure of Bush's legitimacy comes from public opinion studies...

...The No Child Left Behind policy in education has inspired many protests because of its bureaucratic rigidity and reliance on testing...

...The Current Terrain The conservative shape of contemporary national politics remains largely in place despite Bush's falling popularity...

...The last factor is crucial in setting limits to his administration's recovery, as it now colors popular interpretations of Bush's policies in many areas...

...Bush has not been successful in moving things further his way, especially with regard to Social Security...

...Bush barely gained office in 2000, but he expanded his support significantly in the next four years...

...Outside the terms of the realignment debate, however, it is clear that politics in the United States shifted substantially to the right in the late 1960s and early 1980s...

...People who emphasized the extent of a rightward shift argued with those who stressed political disorder and left fragmentation...

...Axes of Conflict Bush has pursued mainly conservative objectives, without causing deep changes either in existing policies or in an already conservative public opinion...

...The public in the United States is closely divided when given a choice between reasonably good centrist and conservative candidates from the main parties...

...In 2003-2005 it was about 3 percent...

...it isn't a rejection of the administration's basic direction...

...The Bush strategy is to incorporate significant numbers of African American and Latino leaders in important political positions and thus to demonstrate Republican seriousness about racial and ethnic inclusion in a dramatic way...

...This is because the Bush administration is so vulnerable to attack as both indifferent and incompetent and because the benefits of strong overall growth have been highly concentrated...

...Yet if there is a conscious strategy in this area, the key target group is probably centrist or moderate whites, who in public opinion terms make up at least 25 percent of the national electorate...

...The immigration issue splits the Republican Party, and Bush is trying to mediate these conflicts through policies that combine high levels of immigration with more regulation...

...A better starting point would be to see Bush as another conservative president in a now lengthy sequence...

...5. For all of their vaunted familiarity with African American culture in the South, neither Carter nor Clinton in their combined twelve years in the presidency produced one political appointment of an African American that compares with the appointments of Powell or Rice...

...Presuming that conflict continues between the United States and important Islamist forces in the Middle East and elsewhere, this conflict will not automatically translate into patriotic support for a Republican candidate...

...None of this is secret information...

...Bush and the Republicans who want to succeed him are not gravely concerned about the Democratic left...

...The durable political shift that analysts debated in the United States in the 1970s and 1980s really did happen, though not in the form of a New Deal–style political realignment...

...But it helps a relatively weak president with limited aspirations to stay afloat...

...Bush is definitely to the right of the median voter or poll respondent on some issues...

...Pushing too far to the right on too many fronts is politically risky given a viable opposition in presidential politics...

...If these figures are roughly correct, they indicate that a plausible Republican candidate can win a majority of votes with a very conservative campaign if he or she can articulate themes that attract slightly more than 25 percent of moderates...

...This is a real accomplishment...

...In public opinion there is tension between a strong desire for low taxes and a modest willingness to increase social spending...

...Or should they move to the left and provide a sharply defined alternative to Republican governance...

...This division may create a certain kind of conservatism, less in ideological than strategic terms, as both parties know they can do decently by mobilizing their core supporters and fear doing anything that might jeopardize that capacity...

...6. There have been three major national elections after the Madrid bombings and subsequent electoral shift in Spain in which a security policy like Bush's was affirmed by the government and was a major issue in the campaign...

...It is easy to make light of this, but for a conservative Republican there is something unusual in Bush's acceptance of ethnic and racial difference...

...Perhaps the growing disapproval of Bush is bringing to the surface latent disagreements with his policies...

...It is easy to understand why anti-Republican writers would want to argue that Republican domination is thin, unnatural, or procedurally dubious...

...Within this group many people agree with Bush's economic and security policies but regard Republican social and racial conservatism as regressive...

...It means that sharp disagreements with some of his policies often coexist with relatively strong support in other areas...

...Ronald Reagan came to the presidency from California, after all, where there was no shortage of Mexican immigrants...

...With racial politics and more clearly with immigration, Bush's views are not on the far right...

...In the United States, the results have been less clear...

...In one area, Bush's policies do have an element of racial redistribution...

...These alignments are usually local, and so they may not have major electoral effects...

...One way to make debate between "centrist" and "leftist" forms of opposition to the Republicans less costly would be to produce attractive and plausible new programs that address widely perceived failures of Republican governance...

...These combine a vigorous and useful anti-Republican polemic with the argument that Republican domination is in some sense artificial, created either by people's misrecognition of their economic interests or by institutional mechanisms that inflate and sustain Republican electoral prospects beyond what the public really wants...

...He was able to win the political battles over two Supreme Court nominations, in part because he produced nominees who were clearly qualified in the technical sense of that term...

...Some Republicans, it is charged, see endless tax cuts and a large deficit as a means of managing this tension by making it impossible to increase spending significantly...

...On these three major axes of conflict— taxes, spending, cultural politics—there has not been much movement to the right in policy or public opinion, certainly not more than one would expect in the shift from a centrist Democrat to a conservative Republican...

...This combination of elements—increased reliance on military strength and public commitment to democracy—is not easily placed in conventional left-right terms...

...Democratic failures have been paired with occasional victories for centrist candidates whose administrations have not produced wonderful results...

...Although Democrats are committed to expanded and effective government (and reasonably so, in the current U.S...

...The primary impediment to some version of Bush's policy is the anti-immigration fervor of parts of the Republican base...

...context), parts of the Democratic left seem to be saying that it is simply not possible to control population movements across the U.S.-Mexico border...

...But the idea that he is so far to the right of the public as to jeopardize a reasonable claim to democratic legitimacy is not supported by two key observations...

...The other is about the substance of opposing views on those issues...

...In electoral terms, this strategy of elite inclusion can have positive results for the Republicans...

...They will be divided about whether to emphasize immigration and what to say about it, with the far right regarding this issue as one of their strengths...

...There is little evidence that Bush has caused a major new shift to the right on most fronts in the last five years...

...The almost 40 percent of the population committed to conservative positions and Republican candidates is not going to disappear...

...Here Bush's policies and practices are clearly to the left of the median Republican voter, and perhaps to the left of the median voter in the electorate as a whole...

...Race...

...In the United States, Reagan's second election made it hard to argue that Democratic commitments still framed American politics...

...Public opinion polls indicate a strong desire for more control at the borders along with willingness for immigration to continue...

...It can find significant public support, especially if formulated in less triumphalist terms than at the onset of the Iraq War...

...Clinton did not change this enduring framework, though many of his policies were quite different from Bush's...

...A centrist course will look like a good bet in the next several years...

...On this basis, current illegal immigrants could be given a path toward citizenship...

...DAVID PLOTKE is Professor of Political Science at the New School for Social Research in New York and is the author of a forthcoming book on U.S...

...Although the deficits (now and through the rest of the decade) are vast in dollar terms, they are not huge relative to a large and growing economy...

...The Democrats provided a reasonable candidate...

...Some of his policies might move the country slightly to the left of where it might otherwise go...

...Foreign Policy and National Security...

...Here, Bush has had significant political effects...

...Continued growth will make such a revival appear feasible (as well as morally compelling...

...In Britain these discussions were especially lively on the left...

...In this crucial area, Bush has indeed moved politics to the right—though, of course, al-Qaeda gets a large share of the credit...

...1. If the political situation were inverted and there were a left-center Democratic president, similarly distant from the median voter on some dimensions, Dissent readers would probably regard that gap as one that could be managed and perhaps reduced by reasonable democratic leadership...

...Immigration...

...To diminish it as tokenism is to misunderstand the strategy and its possible effects...

...This raises a problem: why should one think that a party that doubts the possibility of border control would have the capacity to reorder health care or Social Security...

...Here, there is a real problem for the Democrats, because some of the proponents of bright lines and sharp contrasts propose policies that are likely to be very unpopular, regarding taxes and national security in particular, and perhaps also DISSENT / Summer 2006 35 regarding immigration...

...Thus it is not easy to spell out the distance between Bush and "the center"—there may be no single center...

...If the occupation had gone as easily as the initial war and produced something close to the positive outcome Bush predicted, it would have provided a large reserve of political capital that could be used to achieve conservative policies elsewhere...

...There is a good chance that this will mean a relative upsurge of Republican centrism a la McCain or Giuliani, to weaken prospective lines of Democratic criticism and to convince moderates that some lessons have been learned...

...Bush has been more innovative and has partly disorganized conventional alignments...

...Cultural Conflicts...

...But no outcome is guaranteed...

...Thus Bush's inability to move the public's views even farther to the right does not mean that a reformist upsurge is imminent...

...Pushing such arguments too hard risks making their proponents appear to have been sleepwalking through the last several decades —when the spectrum of successful presidential campaigns runs from Reagan to Clinton, with Nixon or Bush pere more or less in the center...

...Over time, though, the constraints are not so severe...

...If the new appointees move the court far to the right, this claim will turn out to have been wrong and misleading...

...it benefits Democrats if the legitimate desire to focus on social policy and severe inequalities accompanies interesting proposals about what to do next, rather than relying mainly on a (legitimate) moral critique of Republican policies...

...In this area, Bush has probably moved things in his direction...

...If there has been movement it has been away from Bush, for two reasons...

...Growing public disapproval of his administration has several sources...

...Bush retains some popularity or at least respect because of his response to terrorist attacks and threats in 2001 and 2002...

...It has brought Bush into conflict with parts of the Republican base as well as with some Republican foreign policy experts, who worry that too much concern for democracy means excessive and diffuse commitments...

...He is more committed to using American military power than was his father or Bill Clinton...

...Republican actors realize their vulnerability...

...Yet he has benefited from prior changes that provide a framework for Republican electoral success, especially at the presidential level...

...If Bush has not produced a similar shift, one cannot use that absence to prove that there is a deep and strong pro-Democratic majority just waiting to be unearthed...

...Bush has operated within the terms of the large conservative shifts that occurred in the relatively recent past...

...Bush has aimed at significant inclusion of members of racial and ethnic minority groups—but without broad redistributive efforts...

...Analysts who mainly saw continuity beneath the conservative fireworks argued with those who thought that a real break was occurring...

...And his administration features prominent individuals who clearly do not share the cultural program of the far right (Laura Bush, Condoleezza Rice, and Alberto Gonzales...

...If political complexity protects Bush, it also limits how far he can push things to the right...

...In the United States, Australia, and Britain the outcome was favorable to supporters of such a policy...

...If people were deeply unhappy with Bush on grounds that he was enacting programs dangerously far from their preferences, that was a good occasion to express their dissatisfaction...

...This was, after all, the criticism that the Bush campaign made of Clinton/Gore in the 2000 presidential contest...

...Thus it makes sense that the debate between centrist and leftist opposition strategies goes on and on, as it will from now through the autumn of 2008...

...Clinton broke with Bush pere by increasing the extent to which democracy was viewed as a strategic goal...

...One, Bush has provided no solutions to the big problems in health care, and this opens the way for proposals that would involve a larger government role and more spending...

...Bush has not produced any major shift to the right in this area, and he is routinely criticized by parts of the far right for not trying hard enough to do so...

...The Bush administration and likely Republican presidential candidates face a further constraint in the Iraq War...

...This success is the big political story of the last four decades...

...In the last decade there has been relative stability in the self-identification of citizens as conservative, liberal, and moderate...

...Thus Democratic electoral prospects are very good in 2006 and at least decent in 2008...

...4. In 1983-1986 the federal budget deficit was about 5 percent of gross domestic product...

...A similar path would have to be opened for new legal immigrants, given the likely desire of many of them to remain in the United States...

...Should we conclude that the administration has been far to the right of public opinion in the United States, and that this is another reason for its limited political effects and diminished public standing...

...On this axis Bush is to the right of center in a country that is well to the right, in comparative terms...

...My aim in addressing this question is to understand the recent past and to help provide a framework for thinking about the next presidential election...

...With the final and crucial axis of current politics, things are even more uncertain...

...His success in the election of 2004 provides massive evidence to the contrary...

...In Britain the advocates of novelty, disruption, and a new kind of rightward shift clearly had the better of the argument...

...rOR THOSE WHO OPPOSE Bush strongly and want the Democrats to win in 2006 and 2008, the preceding analysis suggests that an old problem will be back in force...

...His is the first administration ever to appoint several African Americans to top positions —Powell and Rice—and to place a Latino—Gonzales—in another top position...

...Bush and other Republicans face increasing difficulties in sustaining broad support for a military project about which most people are skeptical...

...Such innovation is a key part of focusing debate in ways that are strategically advantageous...

...This is not a high threshold...

...The complexity of public opinion might block a strong and creative president from getting much done, especially with major new initiatives in domestic policy...

...Democrats will emphasize the need to expand social spending and government responsibility, especially if growth persists...

...Bush always prefers to cut taxes...

...And the basic task for Republicans, of appealing to enough self-described moderates to clear 50 percent of the vote, remains feasible...

...4 The policy effects of the Bush deficits are more directly about growth than about spending...

...The answer is no—but this is mainly because of prior shifts in that direction...

...Others drift toward positions that confirm popular suspicions of the party as weak and opportunist...

...At the same time, Bush has adapted elements of Clinton's foreign policy...

...He needs to retain support from a number of center and centerright Democratic leaders for this military effort (or at least avoid opposition from them...

...Given their ability, he could claim that the views of his nominees and the views of much of the public were closely enough aligned that simply trying to destroy those nominations was unwarranted on democratic grounds...

...The gap between Bush and the center of public opinion varies greatly by issue.' But the major debates in contemporary U.S...

...These results vary by year and by how questions are posed, but only within a modest range...

...Given tight presidential elections, small shifts away from Democratic commitments matter...

...In this area of growing contention, Bush is also to the left of the median Republican and maybe of the median voter in general, though public opinion is volatile...

...In several areas we have seen more or less what was expected from a narrowly elected conservative president who has not produced innovative or attractive policy initiatives...

...The presence of diverse axes of political conflict diminishes the scale and force of opposition...

...Bush's own views are also a bit more complicated than one would imagine from the Republican platform or from state30 DISSENT / Summer 2006 ments meant to mobilize the most conservative parts of the Republican base...

...In party platforms and presidential campaigns he caters to the far right in cultural politics...

...36 DISSENT / Summer 2006...

...John Kerry's résumé and his campaign had flaws, but he was a qualified candidate who conducted a vigorous and decent campaign...

...Bush is certainly to the right of the median voter/citizen here, even though the median voter, again, is to the right in comparative terms...

...With a new Republican candidate, the underlying structure of public opinion is likely to come more fully into play than in 2006...

...Measured by the high standards of the realignment literature, the changes of the late 1960s and early 1980s do not add up to another in this alleged history of epochal shifts (in which the New Deal and 1930s remain the exemplary case...

...They do limit any new Democratic administration in this way: policies that threaten growth will make reform unlikely...

...One is about deciding which issues matter most—which axis deserves attention right now...

...3. The extent of this support for lower taxes is diminished in pro-Democratic polls that ask whether voters would prefer to see children starve and old people go without medications or instead see tax increases...

...Thus, in a mainly economic sense, Bush's policies are not permanent barriers to a reform politics...

...Moving Right...

...In the present phase of U.S...

...It is too soon to know...

...The Republicans in 2006 and their presidential candidate in 2008 are not apt to gain any wartime advantage...

...This classic debate gets more intense when Democratic prospects in the next elections seem good, as they now do...

...About 40 percent of citizens describe themselves as conservative, 40 percent as moderate, and 20 percent as liberal...

...This is partly because of the continuing appeal of the Clinton model as the only case of Democratic presidential success since 1980...

...Those who are uncomfortable with a centrist approach are obliged not just to register the intensity of their opposition to Bush...

...But this policy has sometimes created new alignments of Republican officials with political interest groups that represent mainly minority constituents—against teachers' unions and Democratic state officials who don't like being told what to do about racial politics...

...He has not changed the political world that he found when he came into office, save in one major area...

...In practice, it is a crude yet occasionally effective means of forcing states to deal with large and sometimes growing achievement gaps between white and nonwhite students...

...This new reality is more important than whether political shifts of the late 1960s and 1980s replicate those of the 1930s (they don't...

...politics---no blacks in top positions...

...There are gaps between his campaign proposals and what he has done and areas where conventional arguments and alignments have indeed changed...

...refashioned in the voice of someone like John McCain, the policy has decent electoral prospects.' Prospects When there are multiple fronts of political conflict, and political forces are differently aligned across them, there are usually two arguments underway at the same time...